Slashdot Mirror
Can We Pollinate Flowers With Tiny Flying Drones? (economist.com)
An anonymous reader writes:
An engineer in Japan has built a 1.6-inch "pollinator-bot" and successfully tested it in his lab. The drone's creator "has armed it with paintbrush hairs that are covered in a special gel sticky enough to pick pollen up, but not so sticky that it holds on to that pollen when it brushes up against something else," reports The Economist. They write that his experiments with the tiny drone "show that the drone can indeed carry pollen from flower to flower in the way an insect would -- though he has yet to confirm that seeds result from this pollination." While flown by a human pilot, next he hopes to equip the drones with their own flower-recognizing technology.
The Christian Science Monitor followed up with four experts, asking "Could a fleet of robo-pollinators replace, or at least supplement, the bees?" One said "There is no substitute for bees." Another pointed out that even if robo-bees are developed, some flowers will prove harder to pollinate than others. A third expert thought the technology could scale, though it would need to be mass-produced, and the engineers would need to develop a reusable pollen-collecting gel. But a fourth expert remained worried that it just couldn't scale without becoming too expensive. "I'm not sure that's going to be cheap enough to not make blueberries hundreds of dollars a pint."
Three of those experts also agreed that the best solution is just wild bees, because domesticated or not, "All they have to do is make sure to set aside enough land conducive to the bees' habitat."
The Christian Science Monitor followed up with four experts, asking "Could a fleet of robo-pollinators replace, or at least supplement, the bees?" One said "There is no substitute for bees." Another pointed out that even if robo-bees are developed, some flowers will prove harder to pollinate than others. A third expert thought the technology could scale, though it would need to be mass-produced, and the engineers would need to develop a reusable pollen-collecting gel. But a fourth expert remained worried that it just couldn't scale without becoming too expensive. "I'm not sure that's going to be cheap enough to not make blueberries hundreds of dollars a pint."
Three of those experts also agreed that the best solution is just wild bees, because domesticated or not, "All they have to do is make sure to set aside enough land conducive to the bees' habitat."
Apparently after getting a laughing face for a president (orange instead of blue), more Black Mirror episodes are coming true.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hated_in_the_Nation_(Black_Mirror)
Sure would take a lot of drones. It might be easier to genetically engineer the bees to have genes to resist whatever is killing them - insecticide or parasites - by splicing in genes from bee species that are resistant but suboptimal for pollination. Bees are basically self replicating drones that can refuel and rebuild themselves from products supplied by the very flowers they are pollinating.
But worst case scenario - if the bees all become extinct - we could use drones instead.
This is about the third or forth slashdot story I've seen that was covered in a "Black Mirror" episode. Now I am really worried about the one with the politician and the pig ...
sigs are for losers (except to point out that sigs are for losers)
“Every year, in late winter or early spring, some 3,000 trucks drive across the United States carrying around 40 billion bees to California’s Central Valley, which houses more than 60 million almond trees... Californian growers now spend $250 million a year on bees”.
"Farmageddon", Philip Lymbery with Isabel Oakeshott, p 63.
Californian growers do not spend that money for fun. They do it because otherwise they will have no crop. Good luck producing 40 billion tiny artificial bees. (Although if the idea goes forward I would buy shares in the manufacturer - just as you will notice that there has never been a massive government IT project that Oracle didn't love).
A simpler and more practical idea would be to stop killing off the bees, which do a great job entirely free of charge.
I am sure that there are many other solipsists out there.
Depending on the facility it would probably just be cheaper to construct a building with an integral bridge-crane, with the 'tooling' to collect pollen and redistribute it on the end of a shaft hanging from that bridge crane. The shaft could be repositioned in all three axes, swiveled, and possibly angled depending on what's needed to reach the various flowers.
I can see several other advantages to this too. First, a large production floor could benefit from having a bridge crane anyway, as it allows whole rows of product to be moved around without having to maintain large aisles, so that more product can be present in a given square footage, so the bridge crane does double-duty, sometimes acting for pollination, sometimes acting for materiel handling. Second, it may be possible to use tubing and vacuum to collect pollen to a central point before redistributing, without requiring flying bots to constantly return to their docks. Third, if any other plant maintenance tasks are required, such as soil sample collection or other monitoring, not being limited to the capabilities of a quadcopter or other drone would probably make those tasks easier.
Granted this is assuming that hybridization is taking place out of the elements where the environment is controlled, both to increase yields and to ensure that no cross-contamination from natural or semi-natural pollination happens. If this is being done out in farm fields then that changes the equation.
Do not look into laser with remaining eye.